Alabama brings in Bill O’Brien as new OC | Yahoo Sports College Podcast
Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel and Pete Thamel, and Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde discuss Alabama’s hiring of former Houston Texans and Penn State head coach Bill O’Brien to fill its offensive coordinator spot.
Video Transcript
DAN WETZEL: Now here's one that flipped back-- we get one of our guys back, Bill O'Brien, the one-time Penn State coach who took the, unbeknownst to him, took the unenviable job of-- it was hard enough to take over for Joe Paterno, and he did a really good job at Penn State all things considered. Then he goes to Houston, he does a good job coaching at Houston-- and I laugh, because last year in either wild card or divisional round-- one of the two-- he had a 20-something point lead on the Kansas City Chiefs last January. And he was fired--
PAT FORDE: Right.
DAN WETZEL: Like, four games into this season. That's the NFL. Now, part of that was his GM work, which included getting rid of DeAndre Hopkins, and angering everyone, and leaving them in a terrible situation of cap and all of that. But Bill O'Brien is back, and he is now the offensive coordinator for the Alabama Crimson Tide. Thoughts on that hire? He was the offensive coordinator in New England before he became the head coach of Penn State. Thoughts on Bill O'Brien coming back? Pete.
PETE THAMEL: I'm a huge fan of this hire. And I think Bill O'Brien could be the next coach at Michigan. I think this is the right amount of humility for Bill O'Brien. Because too many of these coaches-- fired coaches annually overvalue themselves by 25% to 40%. And some people around college football will tell you it's more than that. Bill O'Brien said, hey, look, if I want to go become a college coach, which I believe Bill O'Brien does, I'm going to go back and I'm going to learn the system at the place.
And again, he's smart enough to not try to copy and paste it like Jeremy Pruitt did at Tennessee. But he's going to say, I'm going to go coach the best players, put myself in a position to remind everyone that before I was a lousy general manager, I was a very good coach and play caller. And I think he is in position to do that right now at Alabama and be at the very top of all the coaching lists come the end of next season.
PAT FORDE: Yeah. I mean, shoot, that's the thing-- like you said, I mean, it's not like you-- you can go from Alabama to a really good job like a Michigan. He is-- I think this could work out very well. The personnel is still going to be great at Alabama. It's not going to be as experienced great-- you know, you're going to have a first-year starting quarterback-- boy is he talented, though. Holy cow, I was watching him throw before the game-- yeah, there is a lot of talent there.
The receivers, you're going to lose the best receiver in Alabama history, one of the best receivers in the history of college football. You're going to lose Najee Harris. But you're going to have other guys. I mean, they will have personnel.
Can they just scheme people to death the way Sarkesian did? Maybe not, because, again, your personnel is going to not quite be as experienced. But you're going to have great success. You should right away. If you don't, then it's going to come back and people are going to point the finger at Bill O'Brien and say, you're the problem. But this is an opportunity for him, yeah, to reestablish himself like so many other people who have gone through the Nick Saban cleanse, I guess you would say, where you come out the other side. You go in damaged goods, and you come out the other side a hot head coaching candidate.
DAN WETZEL: Yeah. And I just don't even think he's that damaged of goods. Like, you know, if you look seriously at this-- could he get a Michigan job? Could he end up being the Alabama coach? I don't know. We don't know what the Nick Saban time frame. But this was a really-- he did a very, very good job against what might be the most difficult circumstances you could have at Penn State.
And then he was a very good coach for a long time in the NFL. He was a great assistant at New England. And you're now coming out of the Urban Meyer-- I mean, what exactly do you want out of a candidate? He's pretty much got it all, and he's not that old. He's in his 50s. So I agree. You know, he was not-- he really wasn't a failed NFL coach, and he wasn't a failed college coach.
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